


Silent Forever

by Sheogorath



Category: Silent Hill 2 - Fandom
Genre: Adoption, Forgiveness, Gen, In Water Ending, Leave ending, Mary's letter, recovery from dissociative disorder
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-23
Updated: 2013-06-23
Packaged: 2017-12-15 20:45:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,163
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/853870
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sheogorath/pseuds/Sheogorath
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Leave ending of the game taking a very different route, only because happy endings are <i>so</i> cliché!</p>
            </blockquote>





	Silent Forever

**Author's Note:**

> Okay, so this was inspired by people bitching that the Leave ending is so hard to get when it's really as simple as doing everything necessary for the In Water ending except examining the knife Angela Orosco gives you prior to meeting her in the Lakeview Hotel.

## Silent Forever.

James Sunderland remembered everything now. During his fruitless search for his wife, Mary, in the Lakeview Hotel, a little girl named Laura, whom he'd first met in an abandoned apartment building, had given him a letter she'd received from Mary in the hospital where she'd been treated, then had run off to try and find a second letter, having lost it somewhere. Later on in an office, he'd come across a videotape they'd accidentally left behind after their honeymoon, before Mary got sick, and he'd gone to Room 312, in which they had stayed, to watch it.

✱   ✱   ✱

At first, the tape seemed to be innocuous, showing only what James had recorded so long before, then it showed him something that couldn't possibly have been on it, the truth he'd been denying to himself all the way there. After witnessing his actions with no way to dissociate himself from them, he sat on the room's couch for an immeasurable length of time, finally grieving for what was truly lost, Mary's life and his presumption of innocence. James didn't know how long he'd been there when Laura came into the room, and he informed her of his guilt during the argument that started between them.

"So there you are, James. Did you get the letter? Did you find Mary? If not, let's get going already. Okay?"

"Mary's gone. She's dead."

"Liar! That's a lie!"

"No, that's not true..."

"She... she died 'cos she was sick?"

"No. I killed her."

"You killer! Why'd you do it?! I hate you!! I want her back! Give her back to me! I knew it! You didn't care about her! I hate you, James! I hate you! I hate you! I hate you! She was always waiting for you... why... why..."

"I'm sorry... The Mary you know isn't here. Laura, I'm sorry."

James slumped back onto the couch as Laura stormed from the room again, but just then, his portable radio chose that moment to burst into life with something that startled him.

"James. Where are you? I'm waiting. I'm waiting for you. Please come to me. Do you hate me? Is that why you won't come? Please hurry. Are you lost? I'm near. I'm waiting nearby, James. Please. I want to see you, James. Can't you hear me? James... Please, James... James... James... James..."

Leaving Room 312, fresh hope filling him, James noticed the now dilapidated state of the hotel and wondered how he'd not realised that it had been on fire and efforts had been made to save it. Just how many hours or days had he spent in Room 312, and was Laura safe? Nevertheless, James had to find Mary and he knew that Laura would show up like a bad penny as she always did, so he went down to the second floor and decided to check previously locked rooms, coming across a pair of headphones in the reading room and trying them on. He was just about to take them off again when he was stunned into stillness by a conversation between himself and Mary's oncologist after her diagnosis with aggressive lung cancer.

"Mary's going to die...? You... you must be joking..."

"I'm very sorry."

"But you're a doctor. It's your job to heal people! How can you just let her die!"

"Please calm down. As her doctor, I promise I'll do what I can. But... there's still no effective treatment for her condition."

"How long does she have?"

"I'm afraid I'm not sure. Three years at most... Perhaps six months... It's impossible to say with certainty."

Reeling with shock once the recording or whatever it was had finished, James tore the headphones from his ears and flung them back onto the desk, then stumbled from the room. Mary _had_ been sick with a fatal disease as he'd thought, so why had he been shown smothering her? Thoroughly confused by now, James wandered back and forth through different floors of the hotel, eventually finding himself in a stairwell that was somehow still on fire. It was here that he had his final conversation with Angela Orosco, an old-young girl he'd first met in a cemetery before entering Silent Hill proper. Exiting through the door he'd come in by, after Angela chose death by retreating into the flames, James found himself in the same stairwell, but one that seemed to have been left untouched by the conflagration that had licked at or consumed every other part he'd seen so far. Shrugging this off as part of a warping effect he'd been subjected to earlier, he climbed the stairs back to the first floor, then went through the corridors and a couple of doors to what he thought should have been another corridor of the hotel. After witnessing two Pyramid Heads with spears killing Marie, a blonde clone of Mary he'd met in Rosewater Park, James told the monsters that he realised what he'd done and didn't need them to punish him anymore, causing them to impale themselves on their own spears. He then left through a set of doors into the lobby and tried to exit the hotel, only to find himself in a long corridor, within which he heard another recorded conversation.

"Mary."

"What do you want, James?"

"I, uh, I brought you some flowers..."

"Flowers? I don't want any damn flowers. Just go home already."

"Mary, what are you saying?"

"Look! I'm disgusting! I don't deserve flowers. Between this damned disease and the drugs, I look like a monster. Well, what are you looking at? Get the hell out of here. Leave me alone already! I'm no use to anyone. I'll be dead soon anyway. Maybe today, maybe tomorrow... It'd be easier if they'd just kill me. But I guess the hospital is making a nice profit off me, they want to keep me alive... Are you still here? I told you to go! Are you deaf?! Don't come back! James... Wait... Please don't go... Stay with me. Don't leave me alone. I didn't mean what I said. Please, James... Tell me I'll be okay. Tell me I'm not going to die. Help me..."

After hearing this, James felt a huge surge of guilt wash over him. On the occasion the conversation had actually taken place, he _had_ left the moment Mary had said not to come back, angrily throwing the lovingly chosen bouquet into the trash on his way out of the Eastern Idaho Regional Medical Center before getting into his car and driving back to his cold, lonely house on the other side of Idaho Falls. It had been the following month that Mary had come home for a final visit and he had smothered her out of a mixture of rage and pity.

With tears flowing unnoticed down his face, James decided to look at the letter he'd received from Mary again, thinking he could at least get some comfort from it even though it was now blank, but it seemed to have disappeared from his pocket entirely. Grieving anew over this fresh loss, he nevertheless opened the door in front of him and climbed a long flight of metal steps before coming across someone he thought was dead and calling her name. However, the woman looking out the window of the small room wasn't Mary.

"When will you ever stop making that mistake! Mary's dead. You killed her."

"Maria...? It's you... But I don't need you anymore."

"What? You must be joking! But I can be yours... I'll be here for you forever. And I'll never yell at you or make you feel bad. That's what you wanted. I'm different than Mary... How can you throw me away?"

"I understand now. It's time to end this nightmare."

"No! I won't let you! You deserve to die too, James."

With these final words, Maria turned into a tentacle monster in a hanging cage surrounded by vicious moths, and as much as he was loath to, James was forced to kill her in self-defence. Once Maria had fallen, James was abruptly pulled away and to Mary's bedside in something that seemed like a waking dream.

"Mary..."

"James..."

"Forgive me..."

"I told you that I wanted to die, James. I wanted the pain to end."

"That's why I did it, honey. I just couldn't watch you suffer. No! That's not true... You also said that you didn't want to die. The truth is I hated you. I wanted you out of the way. I wanted my life back..."

"James... if that were true, then why do you look so sad?"

"Mary..."

"James... Please... please do something for me. Go on with your life."

✱   ✱   ✱

James then suddenly found himself in the fog-filled cemetery he'd met Angela in, an envelope in his hand, and he decided to see what was inside, finally finding peace as he read the full version of the letter Mary had written to him for the first time.

"Dear James,  
In my restless dreams, I see that town. Silent Hill. You promised you'd take me there again someday. But you never did.  
Well I'm alone there now... In our 'special place'. Waiting for you...  
Waiting for you to come to see me. But you never do. And so I wait, wrapped in my cocoon of pain and loneliness. I know I've done a terrible thing to you. Something you'll never forgive me for. I wish I could change that, but I can't. I feel so pathetic and ugly laying here, waiting for you... Every day I stare up at the cracks in the ceiling and all I can think about is how unfair it all is...  
The doctor came today. He told me I could go home for a short stay. It's not that I'm getting better. It's just that this may be my last chance... I think you know what I mean... Even so, I'm glad to be coming home. I've missed you terribly. But I'm afraid James. I'm afraid you don't really want me to come home. Whenever you come see me, I can tell how hard it is on you... I don't know if you hate me or pity me... Or maybe I just disgust you... I'm sorry about that.  
When I first learned that I was going to die, I just didn't want to accept it. I was so angry all the time and I struck out at everyone I loved most. Especially you, James. That's why I understand if you do hate me. But I want you to know this, James, I'll always love you. Even though our life together had to end like this, I still wouldn't trade it for the world. We had some wonderful years together.  
Well, this letter has gone on too long so I'll say goodbye. I told the nurse to give this to you after I'm gone. That means that as you read this, I'm already dead. I can't tell you to remember me, but I can't bear for you to forget me.  
These last few years since I became ill... I'm so sorry for what I did to you, did to us... You've given me so much and I haven't been able to return a single thing. That's why I want you to live for yourself now. Do what's best for you, James.  
James... You made me happy.  
With much love, Mary."

After reading this, James was again crying, but the tears he shed this time were ones of happiness and hope as he got his wife's body from his car and brought it back to the sacred ground to bury it. He'd only just finished when Laura showed up.

"Hey, Laura. Where'd you live?"

"Why? Are you gonna take me back to my foster home?"

"The law says I have to, unfortunately, but I'm going to try and start adoption proceedings once I have."

"You mean you and me are gonna be a family? For real?"

James nodded. "For real. And all done legally so no one can ever take you away from me."

"Oh, James. Thank you!"

"You're welcome. Now come on, kid, let's get out of here."

As James drove along Route 26, Laura safely strapped into the passenger seat to his right, he not only remembered what he'd done, but also knew that Mary had forgiven him and provided him with the means of starting a new life.

✱   ✱   ✱

Waking up with a start, James Sunderland breathed harshly as he mused on his dream of his former life and what could have been. Driving into the waters of Lake Toluca out of guilt had been such a bad idea, but what was done was done, and he could now only pray to the old gods that Laura was no longer so lonely wherever she was now. Then, dismissing these thoughts with an imperceptible shrug, James picked up his Great Knife and set off on his rounds as the newest Pyramid Head of Silent Hill.

**Author's Note:**

> Copyright © 2013 Romersa's Protege. Individuals and groups are free to copy and share this work for all purposes except large scale distribution, subject to credit being given and any derivatives being published under the same or a similar licence. All other rights reserved.  
> Elements Taken from Silent Hill 2 are Copyright © 2001 Toyama Keiichiro and Owaku Hiroyuki. All rights reserved.


End file.
